Epilogue for an Exile - Straight Shot
by DavestWriterDavidson
Summary: Set two years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic II, the Exile, Ramsi Tennet, has gone after Revan in the Unknown Regions and has left his companions behind- but what has become of them? And what happens to them when the Exile they were so attached to meets with destiny halfway across the galaxy?


_Straight Shot_

Mira's Story

_**Editor's Note: This is the fourth in a series of epilogues following the main characters set two years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic II. The order in which they should be read are Visas, Atton, Brianna, Mira, and Kreia, but feel free to peruse them at your own leisure. Safe travels, and good luck.**_

All she'd wanted was to heal the echoes, to stop running after an invisible goal, to stop being hunted, to be liberated from the trappings the rest of the galaxy fell to. When she'd touched the Force, it had shown her an entirely new way of living, one that she never could've experienced before that moment, a life she, now, could never leave.

As much as the Force helped her, allowed her to hunt with a sharper, more refined edge, let her dodge blaster bolts with only a fraction of a second to spare, it hindered her. Now, she could feel her prey, their thoughts, emotions. She could track them an entire system away just by searching her feelings, but when they came between her crosshairs she could feel their apprehension, like they _knew _she was aiming at them. Even hunting beasts on Onderon or Korriban was difficult- their minds may have been blank but their souls were pure; no corruption, no evil, just innocence.

_Blast that Tennet, _she thought, _My job shouldn't be this hard_.

From time to time, in the back of her head, a little voice would wish she'd never met him on Nar Shaddaa, never offered her help or her time. Then again, if she hadn't, she'd probably be dead in some trash compactor thanks to Hanharr.

Shaking her head clear of her thoughts, Mira shouldered her rifle again and closed an eye to look down the scope as her quarry came into view, stepping free of the only cantina for miles in the endless desert that was Jakku.

Her target stretched and scratched his equipment, seemingly unaware, or more likely uncaring, that he was still in uniform.

_The Sith are letting themselves go in their disarray. Shame, they used to be much harder to kill. _

Her finger wrapped around the trigger, there was a sharp intake of breath, and then-

Mira was already up on her feet and running back to the shuttle before his body even hit the ground in a puff of dust and red matter. Once she was inside, it would be a straight shot from here to Telos, the place she now called home.

As she cascaded up the ridge, digging her boots and nails into the dusty, sun-bleached rockface, she could feel the panic of the cantina's patrons as they discovered the body, and their eyes flashing upwards towards the cliffs she'd used as a vantage point. They'd surely spot her as she left, but it would be of little consequence. Nobody on Jakku who slummed it up in the cantinas had the means to do anything besides scavenge the body and, if they felt so inclined, bury it. Once the Sith found out their general was dead, she'd be long gone- too late to change clearance codes, too late to deploy fighters, too late to stop the infamous Mira of Nar Shaddaa. The thought was almost too good to not relish in.

Unfortunately, as she dragged herself up onto the face of the cliff, her pride in her escape was abruptly ended.

"Joyous Statement: Mistress Mira, it is good to see you again. However, you may not feel the same about myself."

"Oh, no!" Mira groaned as she gazed up at the rusty red-coloured assassin droid standing above her, armed with a sizeable blaster rifle in one hand and dagger in the other.

As much as the Force helped when it came to people, it proved fruitless when it came to droids- especially this one.

"Nice to see you too, HK," Mira said, blowing a lock of hair away from her face as she sat down, "Enjoying the afternoon sun?"

"Statement: As well as your ship, whose security systems are so mediocre that they may as well have been an insult to my abilities."

"To be fair, it's on loan from a smuggler in Ord Mantell, I would've upgraded it far beyond the abilities of an _outdated _assassin droid."

"Exclamation: _I _am not outdated, far from it! Interjection: Mistress, please, any comparisons between those insulting clones and myself leaves a fluctuating, intermittent charge between my control clusters. Threat: One that may spark out through this rifle and in between your fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae."

The droid actually sounded offended, and she'd seen enough people make that mistake before, so she quickly changed the subject.

"Cut to the chase, HK, what are you doing here?"

"Answer: Hunting, Mistress Mira. The Sith are here, and where there are Sith, there lie answers to Revan. So, as it seems to be, we once again cross paths in my search for the Maker and I am once again in need of your services."

Retracting the dagger into his wrist, he bent forward and extended a hand.

"Statement: You are being recruited, please do not resist."

Taking his mechanical claw, she used his steadfast balance and strength against him, yanking herself up and slamming an elbow across the droid's faceplate, before activating a wrist blade of her own and shoving it into his central power core.

"Recitation: You are being recruited, please do not resist."

_Blast, he's made some modifications since our last encounter at Mimban!_

Quickly withdrawing her arm from his chest, Mira created some distance between them, pushing off of him and sliding backwards in a small cloud of dust and sand.

The droid advanced rapidly, his dagger once again unsheathed, his flame-red eyes burning with intense focus on his target. Mira, however, was fast enough to dance around him, whipping him in the leg with her stun baton as she went.

His arm went high and wide, even as his electronic knee buckled slightly from the shock, and he slashed across her chest. Thankfully, the Mandalorian armour that Canderous and Kex had given her held up decently enough that she wasn't immediately lacerated by the wild slices that followed as HK pivoted on a heel and came after her again.

With only precious moments to spare, she allowed the Force to flow through her and enhance her movements, letting it move her body in perfect synchronization to the droid's attacks. Then, gathering it around herself, she leapt over him and made a mad dash for her shuttle.

Fighting when you were outmatched was crazy enough, fighting HK-47, the genocidal assassin droid, was suicide, and Mira knew it.

Just as she was about to reach the ramp, a blue bolt whipped past her hair and sizzled against the hull, forcing her to duck behind a landing strut.

"Warning: The next shot will not be so careless, Mistress. I suggest you give up now and aid me in the hunt for Master Revan, before I have to add you to the list of meatbags who have died at my hand."

"Of all the places I'd like to die, HK, Jakku isn't one of them!" She called back, searching her belt pockets for something that might help her escape HK's ever-insistent hunt.

_And I'll be damned if I'm added to the dust that's been grinding into my bones from the moment I set foot on this forsaken world._

The droid was taking its time, slowly encroaching on her position. HK's overconfidence in his abilities, and doubts of hers, would be his downfall, if she could just find- _Yes!_

Carefully aiming, she tossed her stun baton at him as she scrambled for cover behind another landing strut. It thunked against his chest harmlessly, the electricity simply crackling across his armour before evaporating into nothing.

"Sarcasm: Oh, no! The pain! My gears and circuits are shutting down before my photoreceptors, how ever shall I go on?" He cried out, before letting out a low-humming chuckle that sounded both seductive and sinister as he stalked closer towards her last position.

"Hey, HK, what's it take to down a rampaging Rancor with a Zabrak Disruptor Cannon?" Mira called out from her hiding spot.

"Unamused Notation: Hardly what I'd prefer my last words to be. Answer: All it would require is one-"

The assassin droid never was able to finish his sentence, given that he'd been shot in the back by an ion disruptor at point blank range, but Mira finished it for him anyways as she deactivated her stealth field belt.

"Straight shot. Funnily enough, that's also enough to take down one rampaging assassin droid."

Not wanting to waste any more time on Jakku, or a likely soon to be reawakening HK-47, she clambered aboard her ship and set off for space, not knowing it was the last time she'd see him or the Western Reaches again.

Re-entering Telos' atmosphere, Mira was profoundly relieved to see the snowy mountains of its pole again. She'd had enough of oranges, reds, and bleached whites to last a lifetime, and that was after only two days on the forgotten outpost world.

Guiding the shuttle in to one of the two hangar bays, Mira reached out to the Force, practicing one of Ramsi's many lessons he'd taught her and the others before he'd left.

"_Feel those around you, especially your friends. Stay in tune with them, and they will guide your further than the Force could ever go. Your friendships are the true strength, not the Force."_

It had been hard at first, opening herself up to it, but even in the short time they'd had to train together she'd advanced farther than she expected.

Perhaps that was the 'will of the Force', or whatever they called it, for her to be the one to accrue experience far faster than others so that the New Order would be better prepared. After all, she was the only one with a padawan learner so far- even if she'd originally been the second-most resistant to the idea of becoming a Jedi. As the months had passed and hunting had come less natural to her, however, the Academy on Telos had grown to be the home she'd never had, and its occupants the closest friends she'd ever had. Even if Mira wanted to, she was in too deep to leave them now.

The hangar bay doors hissed and screeched as they slammed shut behind her, breaking away the serenity of meditation. Mira had been so deep in thought she hadn't even realized she'd unconsciously finished the landing sequence. A benefit of the Force, Mira supposed, but one that made her spine crawl with anxiety.

Releasing the seat straps, Mira stood up and lowered the ramp, happily greeting the influx of cold air that came with it.

Before she could grab her travel bag, Jell, her Espirion padawan, rushed up and greeted her in a hug she would've had a hard time tolerating from anyone else. The red-skinned, dark haired girl looked up at her with excitement in her green and yellow eyes. It'd been almost two weeks since Mira had set out for the Western Reaches, and this would mark the longest they'd spent separated since Mira discovered the girl in the ruins of Taris during one of her first hunts after establishing her connection to the Force. She'd felt Jell, who was panicked and distressed as a group of savages prepared to pounce on her, and had come to her aid. They finished the hunt together, and Mira had taken her back to Dantooine as a potential recruit into the New Order. Ramsi, however, had not only welcomed but supported the idea, helping to aid in her training in every way he could.

Now, however, was no time for dwindling on the past.

Mira let herself be in the moment as she returned the hug. It was good to be home again.

"And then the Third Handmaiden swept me off my feet right as I came back down. I wasn't able to get back up in time to defend, so she had me dead to rights, but they said going thirty straight minutes in the Battle Circle is no small feat!"

Mira couldn't help nut smile with pride at Jell's accomplishment. Under the tutelage of herself, Brianna, and the Handmaidens, she'd become practically a specialist in hand-to-hand combat, something Mira had only dreamed of being able to train into her padawan to in the next decade.

Yet, even with all the combat experience, and with her people's military background, Jell still handled baby Memora with ease and grace in her arms. The Espirions were a truly fascinating people in their dichotomy, something that echoed the Mandalorian culture.

"Bao-Dur also left me a technical manual over the _Hammerhead-_class warships before he left for the fields and, I've got to say, those engineers didn't exactly know how to design power in with looks because that ship is-"

Something flashed across Mira's mind. A warning, a vision, a premonition. She screamed as Hanharr's blade slashed down upon her. Falling to the ground, Mira scratched and scrambled backwards as the Wookie leapt at her again when suddenly the vision disappeared in a whirlwind of black smoke.

When she opened her eyes, Jell was kneeling beside her in the Council Chambers.

"Master, are you okay? What happened?"

Holding her head, which now felt like it had been smashed against a duracrete wall, she slowly got back to her feet.

"I'm not sure, it was a vision, but an impossible one. There was smoke, and danger." Mira answered.

Jell was as confused as she was, and looked to her master for guidance.

Guidance Mira didn't know how to give right now.

"I'm not sure what's happening, Jell, but if I felt it then the others will have too. Go," She said, taking Memora from her apprentice's arms, "Find the Handmaidens and let them know to be on alert, we may have a fight on our hands."

With a quick bow, Jell dashed out of the room.

There was a thump to her left, and Mira instinctively turned and reached for a blaster that wasn't there, only to find Brianna slumped against the wall.

Suddenly, Memora burst into a fit of panic with screams loud enough to burst eardrums, and Mira was caught unaware. Brianna took the child from Mira, who began to feel woozy and lightheaded. They shared a brief look that let her know that the feeling was apparently mutual- and likely spreading to the others.

Atton Rand, the one-time pilot and smuggler of the _Ebon Hawk_, stumbled in from the other side of the room, before making his way over and practically ripping Memora from Brianna's hands.

Then, adding to the confusion, Visas Marr appeared and came for her child.

_With each person that comes into this room, the world only shakes and quakes more and more_, Mira noted as a chill crept up her spine.

Sounding as though he was at a great distance, and through a barrel, she heard Atton's voice break the ringing in her ears.

"What happened?"

Visas, her hood thrown back to reveal her gruesome scars, glanced up at them and said, through choked gasps for air;

"He's dead."


End file.
